Total Lech
by Sister Coyote
Summary: You old lech," she said, but amiably. Tifa/Cid.


Tifa counted herself lucky that, in most ways, she liked her job, but some days were better than others. This wasn't one of the good days.

Weekdays, early evenings, were usually quiet. There were a crew of regulars who stopped by for a plate of chips and a beer after work, and the occasional couple getting a cocktail before going to a show. Nothing much. But today there were not one, not two, but three large parties—and the last was full of young, stupid, and troublesome. The young men in that group had hit on her, more obviously the more inebriated they got—and the women, over-made-up and primping for attention, became more surly to her with each passing moment. She wanted to step hard on the toes of the worst offending men, and assure the women with icy dignity that she had _no_ interest in their boyfriends, thank you, but getting hit on was part of the job, and if she reacted badly to it each time it happened, she'd wind up with no clientèle at all.

They finally left late in the evening, but that was just in time for the most taxing point of the evening: when the bar-hoppers and groups were already well on their way to total inebriation. The crowds were particularly rowdy that evening, and by the end of the day she'd had to throw out three individual offenders and one whole group, who had appeared intent on starting a brawl right in the middle of her floor. (The only high point of the evening, in fact, was the stunned look cutting through their bleary drunkenness as she proved that she _could_ take all five of them at once, and dump their sorry asses on the rainy street, without breaking much of a sweat. After Rude and Loz and Jenova and Sephiroth, they were nothing.)

After that, she considered herself justified in clearing out the bar and shutting down early, clicking off the sputtering "Open" sign and barring it against those too drunk to notice that the sign was off. She was cleaning the bar—and mourning over a bottle of good rum, knocked over and broken during the scuffle—when she heard someone at the door. Some scratching, as of someone trying to open it, and then pounding.

"Bar's closed," she shouted without turning around. "Try down the street."

"I don't want to fucking try down the gods-be-damned street," said a familiar voice. "Lemme in, you evil woman, it's wetter than the Honeybee's sheets out here."

"Cid," she said, and laughed for the first time that day, and went to unbar the door and let him in.

Cid was soaking wet from the rain, and smelled even more strongly than usual of sweat and motor oil. "'Bout time," he groused, stomping his boots not nearly long enough to knock the mud off before tracking it across the floor. "I walked all the way from Freemarket and Forty-seventh. Got something to warm me up?"

She put the rag down. "Gin and tonic on the rocks?"

"Yeah."

She scooped ice into a glass and sloshed together the drink, the way he liked it—mostly gin, a little tonic. "How'd you wind up walking halfway across Edge?"

Cid made a face. "The Highwind won't put me down in the city, right? So I borrowed one of the trucks Barret's been going on about—the ones that burn oil instead of using mako power? But the damn thing broke down on me, and there was fuck-all I could do but walk here. I brought the parts that I think fucked it up, though. Wanna take a look at it tomorrow." He hefted the sack over his shoulder, and she realized that it wasn't just mud he was tracking, but oil, and heavens only knew what other engine fluids.

"Here," she said, putting down his drink.

"Thanks," he said. He reached for it with one hand while swinging the sack up with the other —

"Anywhere but the bar!"

— and bringing it down with a heavy clank onto the polished wood. She cringed.

"You need to relax, babe," he said.

"You have no idea the kind of day I've had, or you wouldn't say that. I like my job, but sometimes the patrons are idiots."

He laughed. "Point taken. Nobody around to help you out?"

He was asking 'where's Cloud?' without asking it. She shook her head, and then said, pointedly, "Shera not around to give you a lift?"

"Okay, okay, I get your drift. Nah. You know how you always give me shit about us being on-again, off-again? Well, we're off-again." He knocked back the drink in one long swallow. "For a couple months, in fact."

Tifa laughed. "I see." She rubbed the back of her neck, sore from stress and irritation.

"Back hurt?" Cid put his glass down. "Turn around and I'll rub your shoulders."

"You old lech," she said, but amiably, and turned around.

Cid had really _strong_ fingers, which, she supposed, was only to be expected from a mechanic-and-engineer who did a lot of work with his hands. He went straight for the tight muscles between her shoulderblades, worked out and down along her spine, the back up to the hard knots where her neck met her shoulders. Where his fingers brushed bare skin, she felt the catch of calluses, the warmth of skin. Even through the leather of her bodice he was doing a fair bit of good, but —

Maybe he was reading her mind. "Not to sound even more like an old lech, but I could do a lot better job if I wasn't doing this through leather."

She hesitated. For a moment, the specter of good-girls-wouldn't rose up in her mind, but she quieted it. This was Cid, and she trusted him to push the envelope but not quite far enough to actually make her uncomfortable. He was a friend, and she trusted him. Anyway, she had a bra on. "All right," she said. He pulled his hands away and she unzipped her bodice, quickly and without fuss, telling herself this was definitely not a striptease.

Some part of Cid didn't seem to get the memo, though, because as soon as her bodice was off—even with her _bra_ on, and it was an industrial-strength support bra, not a skimpy lacy confection—he said, "Holy fucking fire of Ifrit."

"Come on. I used to wear _shirts_ tighter than this when we were traveling around."

"Yeah, but that don't mean I can't be appreciative." He ogled her another moment, but in a friendly sort of way, and then said, "Your back?"

"Right." She braced her hands on the bar and let him go back to work. Now she could feel his fingers working directly on muscle and tendon, draining away the pain and soreness. She found that she didn't even care anymore about the gunnysack slowly dripping oil and gods-knew-what all over her bar.

When she was good and relaxed, Cid pulled his hands away and gave her an awkward little pat between the shoulders. "Better?"

"Much." She stretched and rotated her head on her neck, blissful with the utter lack of pain. Cid made a little choked noise. "You want a shower?" she continued. "There should be plenty of hot water."

"And I stink like a behemoth in full rut," he said. "Yeah, sure."

"Top floor, second door on your left."

Cid started up the stairs as she picked up her bodice, and then paused and looked back at her with a grin. "Maybe afterward I'll rub your feet. Bet they're sore, too."

"Lech," she said again, cheerfully. "Maybe I'll let you."


End file.
